This invention relates generally to natural language processing and more particularly to text management.
Numerous sources of information are readily available to interested individuals these days. In addition to the traditional sources found in a town library such as books, magazines and newspapers a person may now search the world wide web to access such traditional sources based out of cities and countries far away. As a result, an individual looking for information on a particular subject these days will typically be faced with an abundance of pertinent material.
Typically referred to as the "information explosion", this onslaught of information can make keeping abreast of the latest information on a particular topic difficult, if not impossible. In many cases, even if only the most pertinent documents describing a topic could be identified, the amount of text identified would often prove too lengthy to be read by the individual in the time available.
What is desired therefore is an automatic means by which to process available documents to provide a reader a synopsis of the material contained in the document. In some cases this synopsis would provide the reader sufficient information however it would also enable the reader to identify those documents which prove worthy of reading in their entirety.